I’ve donated to Ron Paul four times during his presidential run. All small amounts, but I just felt I had to put my money where my heart was. I know he won’t win but I’m hoping he can persuade the winner, which I assume will be Mitt Romney, to embrace some Libertarian ideas when it comes to the economy.

Gingrich and Santorum aren’t interested in what Ron Paul has to say. That leaves Romney. As liberal a Republican as Romney is, I guess I have no choice but to try and influence him. Miracles can happen! Romney is a businessman, and he appears to be honest. I hope he is also courageous because it will take courage to do what has to be done, which is to allow capitalism to pick the winners and losers, not Government intervention.

We had 80 mph plus winds today in the Gold Beach area as a huge Pacific rainstorm pounded us. Part of the roof of our building blew off but we have sustained no water damage so far. The winds are due to abate to about 60 mph tomorrow so I think we’ll be okay until the roof can be fixed early next week.

Lenie to do Oregon show

Lenie heads to Eugene, Oregon tomorrow for a three-day show beginning Friday. It’s the Good Earth Home, Garden, and Living Show at the Lane County Fairgrounds. I was supposed to go with her but I’m going to stay here to make sure the house and BHM building don’t blow away.

Lenie’s sister, Cindy Myers, will also be at the show showing her alpacas. She raises them in nearby Creswell. Alpacas are a much bigger draw at the show than the magazine.

Dick Morris, the former Bill Clinton campaign manager and now Fox News analyst and Republican strategist, warned yesterday of “horrific consequences for the GOP” if Ron Paul wins the GOP nomination.

Morris said: “Ron Paul remains terrifying. He is really the ultimate liberal in the race. He wants to legalize drugs, repeal the Patriot Act, slash our military spending, pull out of Afghanistan… On these issues, he’s way, way to the left of Obama. What makes him a conservative is hard to tell. But, whatever he is, he would be a disaster as the Republican candidate. ”

This is a fairly true statement, and the Republicrats (my term for the Republicans and Democrats, who barely differ from each other in my estimation) are finished if Ron Paul gets elected President.

Ron Paul is terrifying to the old guard of the Republican Party precisely for the reasons Dick Morris states: “He wants to legalize drugs, repeal the Patriot Act, slash our military spending, pull out of Afghanistan…” That is exactly what we need to do!

Legalizing drugs will end the drug war, thereby breaking the drug cartels, emptying our prisons of marijuana users, and undercutting the corruption of our police, judiciary, and political system that attends the drug war.

Repealing the Patriot Act will help restore our personal liberties. The Patriot Act would have put all our Founding Fathers in prison, just as it can put any one of us in prison for all sorts of vague conspiratorial crimes.

Slashing our military spending and pulling out of Afghanistan will go a long way toward eliminating America’s debt. We are in 120 foreign countries right now, not just Afghanistan. Getting out of Afghanistan is just the tip of the iceberg. Ending our role as the policeman of the world would bring all that money back home. Europe, Japan, and everyone else should pay for their own defense.

If liberals like these ideas too, that’s fine! Libertarians like Ron Paul and I have always believed many liberals share important Libertarian concepts.

“What makes him a conservative is hard to tell,” Dick Morris says.

It’s his fiscal stance, Dick! His insistence that we live within our means! That we neither pay for those who are unwilling to work nor pay for those crony capitalists who contribute to the Republicans and Democrats’ campaign coffers. It’s a novel idea for many hard core Republicans and Democrats, I know. But it’s our Founding Fathers’ idea: America should offer opportunity, not handouts for loafers or favoritism to political allies.

And here is another reason why he is a conservative: It’s his insistence that we live within the limits of the U.S. Constitution. It’s the greatest (though imperfect) document ever written. That’s why the Tea Party movement was spontaneously born. Note the word “spontaneously.” Enough of us are still left who want freedom above everything else, even security, that we ignited “spontaneously” as a political movement.

That’s why Ron Paul has caught on with both conservatives and liberals who value America’s freedoms above all else. And that’s why both old guard Republicans like Dick Morris and Newt Gingrich and old guard Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama are scared stiff of us.

We who support Ron Paul don’t want a Republican or Democrat victory. We want America saved!

“Still think you have the right to grow your own food? I’ve heard all sorts of naysayers claiming that S.510 — the Food Safety Modernization Act — is no threat to small growers and family farms. They say the fears about S.510 are overblown and that the government can’t possibly shut down your backyard gardens or small, local vegetable farms. They say this with the kind of smug certainty you might typically hear from a doctor who thinks he knows everything about human health (but who actually knows nothing about nutrition).”

I hear a lot of outrage from governments over the WikiLeaks disclosures, but I don’t hear a lot of outrage from ordinary people. I’m not outraged! I also have not heard about anyone dying because of the WikiLeaks release of confidential government information. But governments imprison, torture, and kill people all the time.

The many attempts now underway to censor WikiLeaks, and the threats by many governments, including our own, against WikiLeaks show how fearful governments are of the harsh light of truth. I’d prefer to know more, not less, about what my government, and other governments, are doing. I don’t buy into the argument that Wikileaks is making it harder for diplomats to solve the world’s problems. They are doing a lousy job anyway; I doubt WikiLeaks will cause them to do worse.

In fact, I’ve seen my own country, the United States, turn more and more in the direction of a police state the last decade. I don’t think freedom and civil liberties could do any worse than they have done lately. I’ve thought for years that the Internet had the potential to become the greatest freedom toll ever, so maybe Wikileaks, by revealing the lies and corruption prevalent among world leaders, is the start of the Internet fulfilling its promise.

When liberty’s path has been going steadily downward for so long, I think it’s time for a drastic change. Maybe all this new information about corrupt politicians all over the world will inform more people about how screwed up things really are.

The most important item on any ballot in the country this Nov. 2 is Proposition 19 on the California ballot. It seeks to make marijuana legal, which will be a small initial step to stopping the drug violence associated with America’s War on Drugs.

Just today the Associated Press is reporting the following story:

Mexico: 13 dead in massacre at Ciudad Juarez party

(AP) – 6 hours ago

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — Gunmen stormed two neighboring homes and massacred 13 young people at a birthday party in the latest large-scale attack in this violent border city, even as a new government strategy seeks to restore order with social programs and massive police deployments.

Attackers in two vehicles pulled up to the houses in a lower-middle-class Ciudad Juarez neighborhood late Friday and opened fire on about four dozen partygoers gathered for a 15-year-old boy’s birthday party.

The dead identified so far were 13 to 32 years old, including six women and girls, Chihuahua state Attorney General Carlos Salas told reporters at a news conference at the crime scene. The majority of the victims were high school students, a survivor said. … You can read the rest of the story here, or on any of the other news outlets on the internet.

The reason the California proposition is so important is because it puts America’s most populous state on a collision course with the federal government over whether or not drugs should be legalized or continue to be criminalized. The federal government’s Attorney General Eric Holder has already said the feds will continue to prosecute marijuana users, whether or not Prop. 19 passes.

The California proposition only deals with marijuana (These Mexican gangs are battling over more than marijuana) and it’s not a blanket state-wide mandate (since local jurisdictions can opt to legalize and tax marijuana or not), but it is a start. If this measure passes, other states will likely follow California’s lead and set the stage for a battle between the states and the feds. It will quickly become a major states rights issue.

Eventually, of course, what is needed is to legalize all drugs. Just as with the repeal of Prohibition, it will take the crime element largely out of the drug equation and put drug abuse in the medical arena where it belongs. As a huge additional benefit it will cut America’s prison population down drastically and free up hundreds of millions of dollars now used in arresting and prosecuting drug offenses.

One European country has already gone the legalization route with tremendous success. Portugal legalized all drugs ten years ago, and in that time it has gone from one of the worst drug-abusing populations in Europe to one of the least-abusing populations. You can read about it here.

Many bureaucrats don’t want Proposition 19 to pass. It will mean wholesale layoffs for bureaucratic paper pushers, and especially cops, judges, prosecutors, and jailers. They like drugs being illegal because it ensures them of a fat job and pension.

Prop 19 is a chance for citizens to strike a blow now for a sane drug policy, and to sow the seeds of an important states rights battle with the federal government.

Of all the commentaries I’ve written in my 20 years as publisher of Backwoods Home Magazine, the one that still haunts me to this day is titled, “America, land of the free
…ha, ha, ha!,” which appeared in Issue No. 104, the March/April 2007 issue. It is about Matt Bandy and Bradford Metcalf, both wrongfully prosecuted by the U.S. Government.

Bradford Metcalf remains in prison these past 12 years on trumped-up charges concerning weapons possession, but the Supreme Court may hear his case. I got the following email this evening from the Metcalf family:

Defenders of the Constitution,

The Supreme Court will confer regarding “10-6452 Metcalf v. US” on Oct. 15, 2010.
Metcalf was convicted in 1998 of Conspiracy to Possess Automatic Weapons and 8 other possession charges (no violence) and sentenced to 40 years (he acted as his own attorney – his jury thought he would get 3 to 5 years…). You can contact the Supreme Court Public Information Office to urge their consideration at this address:

http://www.supremecourt.gov/contact/contact_pio.aspx

Here is what I sent:

Subject: Case Defining “arms”

Please consider case no. 10-6452 Bradford Metcalf v. US (slated for conference Oct 15) as a vehicle to define arms protected under the 2nd Amendment. Can the US limit possession? Is a rifle OK but not grenade? 50 caliber but not 20mm canon? “80% completed machine gun sideplate” (requires milling to make functional)?

Thank you,

Greg M.

Sent to:

Second Amendment Sisters
Jews for Preservation of Firearms Ownership
Backwoods Home Magazine

Heartfelt thanks to you all.

Please join me in contacting the Supremes to consider this case. Bradford Metcalf is a political prisoner left over from the Janet Reno/Bill Clinton crackdown on conservative dissidents in the wake of Waco and Ruby Ridge. Unfortunately, he is not the only political prisoner still languishing in federal penitentiaries.

Here is a chance to at least speak up on behalf of one nearly forgotten political prisoner.